“There is a healing quality to listening to it that actually helps,” he said.

“When combined with not drinking too much and walking and eating properly and all the other things that supposedly help one’s mental health as well as clearly one’s physical health.

“The purity and passion of art does help with the mind I think,” added the 62-year-old.

Stephen Fry poses for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film Genius, in London in 2017. (Invision/AP)

Discussing his coping mechanisms, the QI star said he liked to “bathe” himself in music like Beethoven’s and to “think of people who have gone before me who have been lit by the flame of mania and doused by the icy water of depression and lived those lives of flaring up and going down and being close to the edge and how they have managed to do things and to achieve things and to retain their love and hope”.

He said one “clings to that”.

Fry said everything can feel “hopeless” and flavourless when you are feeling suicidal but that during the recovery period “you suddenly find that flavour”.